By Noah Rothman
Monday, March 03, 2025
For Republicans who grasp the threat that Vladimir
Putin’s expansionist and risk-prone Russia poses to the U.S.-led geopolitical
order, the apprehension over the live prospect that the United States will cut
Ukraine aid off is palpable. Those in this cohort who covet their good standing
within Donald Trump’s movement have endorsed the notion that Volodymyr Zelensky
is the problem. He must repair his relationship with Trump and Vice President
JD Vance, they insist, or he must make way for someone who can.
After all, Zelensky’s offenses are myriad — indeed,
they’ve mounted over the weekend as Trump’s defenders worked themselves into a
lather over the audacity of a man they regard as little more than the vassal
representative of a client state.
He didn’t forgo the military-style attire he has worn
since the outbreak of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in the Oval Office.
If he didn’t want to imperil his country’s security, perhaps he should have
dressed less provocatively. Zelensky is alleged to have rolled his eyes when he
was being lectured so sanctimoniously about his selfish refusal to consign his
countrymen to persecution and subjugation. He had the temerity to ignite the blowup by asking about the extent to
which Russia can be trusted not to violate a cease-fire as it did previous
cease-fires (repeatedly and in ways the international community dared not
acknowledge for fear of the consequences) in the absence of American security
guarantees. It was that question and the lack of any satisfying answer to it that so offended
Zelensky’s hosts. A scenery-chewing display of righteous indignation is what he
got in response, not because he deserved it but because the performance has so
effectively misdirected observers.
It has been nothing less than a national embarrassment to
watch Republicans fish for a rationale that justifies what they’re talking
themselves into. What they’re articulating is a monarchical conception of
America’s national mission, in which its geostrategic priorities are either set
or altered in accordance with the prestige of one man. Even if you believe
Zelensky has been insufficiently grateful to the West and America in particular
— a subjective and evidentiarily deficient claim — that does not justify the
wholesale reappraisal of America’s posture toward its allies and enemies or its
grand strategic objectives. But a comprehensive renovation of American foreign
policy is what Trump and company want to engineer, and Republicans are looking
for a permission structure that allows him to get there without encountering
much cognitive dissonance along the way.
In a sense, Republicans are acting out a form of the
drama of which they were so critical when it was Joe Biden mercilessly
hectoring an American ally for the benefit of an ideologically captured
domestic constituency. Throughout the war Hamas inaugurated on October 7,
neither Biden nor Democrats demanded much of the pro-Hamas protesters or their
foreign sponsors in places such as Tehran and Doha because they knew deep down
that demanding behavioral changes from those actors is a waste of breath. They
berated, cajoled, and blackmailed Israel because Israel was the only
responsible party in that conflict. Even at the risk of creating perverse
incentives for more violence, the alternative to making Israel out to be the
black hat in their passion play was fraught with real risk. Beating up Israel
was the easy thing to do. Not only was Israel the only combatant that was
receptive to Biden’s overtures and threats, to whom could Jerusalem turn if not
America?
Team Biden thought they had Israel over a barrel, but the
American people were not nearly as amenable to the inverted morality that so
many Democrats convinced themselves was the path of least political resistance.
Republicans are making a similar mistake. And all the things they tell
themselves to soothe their deservedly addled consciences will not justify it in
the end.
Republicans can tell themselves they’re adopting a policy
designed to advance a decades-old conservative critique of European
welfare-statism. Perhaps withdrawing American security guarantees — if not
formally then by unavoidable inference — will compel Europe to take its
security more seriously. Indeed, it probably will. But those security
guarantees that underwrote the European social compact also provided the U.S.
with leverage and influence over the continent’s security priorities. Europe is
not constitutionally inclined toward confrontation with Russia, to say nothing
of Iran and China. The continent may rebuild its defense industrial base, stand
up stronger defense forces, and even freelance in North Africa, the Middle
East, and NATO’s frontiers, but in the absence of the inducements that made
NATO members into the reliable American partner they are today. And that
assumes Europe will choose to confront rather than to accommodate America’s
increasingly confident enemies, which is doubtful.
Republicans can convince themselves that the president
and vice president’s contemptuous handling of a partner state’s head of
government is Zelensky’s fault, and no other government — allied and
adversarial alike — will draw any lessons from it. But it is foolish to presume
that a successor Ukrainian government would be less vociferous in its defense
of Ukrainian liberty in the face of a violent and unyielding threat to it. That
is the Ukrainian president’s foremost sin, after all: Zelensky’s presumptuous insistence
on a just peace. It is his country that has been treated like an unwanted
parasite while its tormentors in Moscow have been granted dispensation after
dispensation. And despite the lack of any reciprocity from the Kremlin, the
Trump administration’s patience with Moscow knows few apparent limits. A
successor who is not imposed on Ukrainians by a foreign power will be just as
stubbornly committed to his country’s continued existence.
The GOP can forget the hard-won lessons learned by the
generations who sacrificed so much to bequeath us with the peaceful and
prosperous global covenant we take for granted and presume that America’s
frontline partners will remain steadfast friends of Washington. But deep down,
they know that all that underwrites the U.S.-led order is America’s capacity to
project power abroad and willingness to do so in defense of its interests and
values. Those frontline partners have now seen how willingly — indeed, eagerly
— this administration and its supporters abandoned America’s commitment to
support the aspirations of freedom-loving people to resist the tyranny on their
doorstep. There’s a level of trust required of a nation that opts to balance
against the bully in its neighborhood. Historical patterns suggest it’s easier
and more common to bandwagon with the local bully, and we could see more of
that at America’s expense.
Indeed, at the breakneck pace with which the Trump
administration is pursuing its foreign policy, we probably will. To the extent
we’ve seen this White House challenge America’s enemies, it has been passive aggressive. The real, visceral aggression is
reserved for America’s friends. As a result, the makings of a transatlantic
schism are apparent to all who are willing to honestly survey the geopolitical
landscape without fear of the politically inconvenient conclusions that
analysis may produce. And for what? To avenge the clearly pretextual slights of
which Zelensky is accused, and to salve the egos of the executive branch’s
temporary custodians? That’s not how we do things in America. At least, it
wasn’t once.
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